by Jared Ravens
"You can't fix this."
"I failed."
"She isn't controllable. You were my last resort."
"I'm so sorry."
“Genesee," Goetz said firmly. Genesee looked up to a torch which burned brighter than any others along the wall. "She is going to go against my orders, is she not?"
"I don't know that."
"Yes, she is. Fairfax is mine. He's mine to use. She is not to touch him."
"She sees him as a threat."
“That's obvious. She should. So."
Genesee walked towards the torch as if it was a face to talk to. It glimmered, lowering its colors down towards the handle and soon it was just him and the purple light of a candle.
"She's not punishable. You can't do anything to her."
"Oh, no?"
"She can't die."
"Nothing dies. But it does change. Everything is changeable."
"But she's too powerful."
"That's the problem. She holds everyone hostage with her power, even me. If I displease her she threatens to do away with everything I've built."
"But if you change her..."
"I will change her. Into something new."
The flame increased, becoming a building, a tower that Genesee walked toward. Its round base grew upwards until it was eight stories high. Genesee went inside and looked up through it, its circular rings traveling upwards like the inside of a telescope.
"Everything we see or hear or touch is because of her."
"I created everything."
"She made how we perceive it. If she changes...."
"I will take care of it."
Genesee bend down and sat on the floor. Its coolness radiated through his pants. The tower became illuminated, a bright tan building that then stretched outward. He felt what Goetz was saying. It was becoming a coliseum.
"I have to go there."
"Yes."
"And take her out," he said, quietly.
"Yes. Fairfax can do it."
"Maybe..." he put his hands on his chin and crossed his legs, resting his head on his elbows. He had never been a little boy, but he felt so much like one right now.
“Maybe we went too far with Fairfax.”
“No,” said Goetz. “If he’s on our side then she won’t be a problem.”
“If he’s strong enough.”
“You made him strong enough.”
“If he behaves.”
“You will be able to.”
“Its just… Why does she have to be so obstinate?”
She had always complained. She had never disobeyed like this. If it was not all of them working together, then it had to just be her way. Only her in charge. Only her and her blindspots and idiosyncrasies. She was so powerful that she could not understand her own weaknesses. Oh, but she was so.. something.. . his eyes became wet.
"Genesee," said Goetz. "You just have not loved anyone else. That's why you feel this way."
"I was made to be her husband," he said quietly. "Not her executioner."
"Genesee, you're here because you're the only one I can trust."
"If I kill her then it can all disappear."
"You don't know if that’s true. She can’t make everything go away. That's the lie she holds over your head.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Because, Genesee thought, you don’t know if that’s true, either.
The Two Women
When she was brought into the sitting room at the penthouse at the Copper Tower to meet Martel, McKenna staggered into the room so awkwardly it looked as if she had just learned how to walk. Martel asked her to sit, not out of politeness but out of fear she would faint. As Martel explained the situation to the nervous and bewildered girl her maternal instincts kicked in and she took McKenna’s hand and patted it as if consoling a schoolgirl. While McKenna looked blankly off towards one of the murals in the sitting room Martel looked down at their touching hands, wondering why she had thought it necessary to show support for a girl who, through her family, had most certainly had first had knowledge of the types of things that would eventually be asked of her.
McKenna did not pay attention to their touching hands. She was staring at a painting featuring Staley’s head being thrown over a cliff, Celia standing triumphant with a sword in her hand. She was being sucked into the painting, psychologically and physically. She was becoming a part of something that, up until now, she had only had to watch from the sidelines. Martel asked what questions she had. McKenna wanted to ask if she was Staley or Celia in this story.
“Why me?” she asked.
“You knew him. He loved you.”
McKenna blinked at this. Did this person actually know either off?
“I… I don’t think he did. We were friends.”
“It is a type of love. He certainly responds to you, and he would listen to you,” Martel said confidently.
Would he really? But who was she to question Martel, who had marital bliss as one of her responsibilities.
“I don’t know if he would.”
“Perhaps you do not feel the same way,” Martel replied. “That’s not what you should be focused on.”
“I should be focused on…. Making him come back.” McKenna had wanted to to say ‘manipulating him to come back’ but that struck her as the wrong foot to start out on.
“Precisely.”
If there had been one manager from The Hill that McKenna respected it would have been the dignified and wise Martel. The way she carried herself was everything that she felt those that lived on The Hill should aspire to. But the thought of having her as a traveling companion terrified her.
“Just me and you?”
“Yes, my dear. A few to guard us, but that is it. I want a small party so it doesn’t terrify him.” She could see the hesitancy on McKenna’s face. “McKenna, we have to bring him in safely.”
“Can’t we just leave him alone?”
Martel drew in a long breath.
“I don’t think that’s possible at this juncture. Too much has happened. But we can make the outcome something positive.”
It had not been for hard for McKenna to decide what to do but it had taken her the entire trip across the desert to become comfortable with it. As she road with Martel in the back of a coach, bumping along the scarred landscape and pouring water over her face to stave off heat stroke, she still had a boulder of anxiety knotted in her stomach. She had thought the closer they came the more the rightness of her mission would sink in. Instead, she only questioned it more. Was she helping or harming him? Were her father and mother going to conspire against her? Was Martel to be trusted?
Perhaps to soothe this last question Martel spent her time in the coach showing her companion recipes for balms and techniques for sewing up wounds. They had little to speak about so the quiet lessons filled the void nicely. After she had successful crushed a flower into a paste and mixed it with two or three others she would look up into Martel’s proud face and realized she had not thought about her own head being thrown off a cliff in over an hour.
She had left behind a girlfriend, sending quick note via courier that could not fully encompass all she wanted to say. She explained as little as possible to her mother, who saw Martel and knew enough to keep her mouth shut. She was thankful her father was in Yelis. She could not tolerate a word of his advice.
“And thus, the knot is tied,” Martel said, moving her hand from the stitch she had applied to her own wrist. It looked painful, a string she had laced beautifully up and around both sides of her limb. Of course Martel could not feel anything because of the anesthetic she had applied to herself.
Also, she was not human.
She pulled the string and jerked her hand away, removing the stitch seamlessly with one motion. No blood or holes remained. McKenna attempt to imitate the stitch on Martel but the bumping of the coach became intolerable and she fell back into her seat.
“Martel?” She said, drawing her breath in t
o ask a question. Martel nodded.
“I know what you are thinking,” she said. “I’m teaching you this for a reason.”
Before McKenna could respond the coach driver yelled ‘Ho!’ And they both leaned out the window. There, in the middle of the desert was a large worn tent, its tan color bleached nearly white form the light of day. People stood up in the tent and watched the coach. A few guards approached them, two men and a woman, all dressed in matching white and red uniforms that had had been ripped and torn at the limbs and waist to accommodate the heat.
“Are those Sigma troops?” McKenna asked.
“No,” said Martel. “Those aren’t their uniforms.”
Indeed, the people in them were dark and worn from the desert heat with gapped toothed smiles and long frazzled hair. They were rebels in stolen clothing.
“This is our stop,” Martel said, hopping out. She instructed McKenna to stay as she walked towards the three of them. She spoke to them while McKenna waited nervously. Walking back to the coach she smiled lightly at McKenna.
“We don’t have have to travel anymore but we do have to wait.”
Martel’s patience startled McKenna. As the night came upon them and campers lit fire she thought about what Genesee or Celia would do if they had arrives somewhere and their contact had not met them exactly on time. Martel sat on a wood box and practiced her potions, pulling strands of grass apart. She was as patient and quiet as a cloistered priestess. Yet in her eyes Martel could see the fire, the same spark that the artist put in Celia’s portrait in their sitting room. It was easy to see her as a simple woman. Her sisters strength was to flex her power; Martel’s strategy was to hide it.
To her side soldiers stood guard in full, clean uniforms that must have been sweltering. They staring suspiciously at the three rebels that sat joking around the fire, peering over their shoulders at the woman with their back to them. They spoke a different language but it was obvious from their looks who they were talking about.
Martel stood up and walked past her guards. She stood behind the three rebels and threw a powder into the fire. A huge green plum blew straight into the air. The three of them fell back. One of them pulled a sword up at her. She thrust her hand up, grabbing the end of the sword and pulling it from his hand. She stared at him as she threw it to the side, rendering him dumbfounded and helpless. The other two, still on their backs, lay frozen.
Martel threw another powder into the fire, this one red. The next was blue. She smiled at the man with no sword and said something to him that McKenna couldn’t understand. The man responded. Martel’s next words brought a laugh.
She walked smiling to her alarmed guardsand sat back down on the box. McKenna and the soldiers eyes met, all sharing the same stunned expressions.
“Friends are better than enemies,” Martel said to McKenna without looking at her. “But you need to show people why they shouldn’t be your enemy in the first place.”
McKenna woke as the first bronze light of daylight illuminated the the horizon. Martel stood at the edge of the tent floor, her hands clasped behind her, as still as a tree. McKenna tip toed across the sleeping bodies to come to her side.
“What is that sound?” McKenna asked. There was a rumble, numerous low clumping noises vibrating the hard surface of the desert floor.
“There’s a lot of people out there,” she said, quietly. “They’re moving quickly.” She tilted her head as if trying to hear something specific in the faint noise.
“What people?”
“Your mother is out there.”
“What?” McKenna said, much louder than she intended. “You can tell where she is?”
“Just a little. It's very faint. She and Celia are always communicating. It's usually a one sided conversation.”
She walked back into the tent, examining a box as if it might have something useful stored in it.
“What’s she doing out here?”
“Probably has something to do with all the footsteps” Martel asked, pulling a few shriveled fruit from the box.
It was hard to believe Delia was anywhere outside of the city, much less this wasteland. She hadn’t left Sigma in twenty years as far as McKenna knew, except for this or that function on The Hill. She was glued to her home life and work at the temples. That she would go anywhere east of Alby woods was unthinkable.
The rebel guards used a mirror about the size of a male torso to blast signals into the far off foothills several times a day. They would wait for a response to flash back to them and tell Martel, who would nod.
“Soon,” she would say. But she was wary of any message from the rebels since they seemed as organized as stray animals. She would sit by McKenna and begin mixing potions again to pass the time. Of all The Hill residents she was perhaps the most self aware of how others saw them. She saw their elitist-ness as a poison that would wreck their home and those they ruled over. It also held everyone at a distance from them, fearful of what they would do. That didn’t mean she was good at understand humans, or even really speaking to them. The only way she knew to do to connect with McKenna was to teach her. So she drew ingredient after ingredient from her satchel and showed her medicines, breaking the silence that hung between them.
McKenna sat in the sweltering heat and watched, flattered that she thought her worthy of such things. She did not consider herself to be a chemist or medical person and she asked if Martel saw that in her.
“Anyone can do these things,” Martel said. “You’re bright in many ways. That’s why Genesee chose you.”
“Genesee did?” McKenna asked, surprised.
“He did. I told him I thought it was a good idea.”
“He knew about me…”
“He’s very aware. He can be very wise.”
McKenna nodded, holding her tongue.
“Sometimes,” Martel continued. She smiled at McKenna to let her knew it was fine to criticize. She had finished grinding the flower pedals and poured a black powered into the bowl.
“My mother would say otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t deny that your mother has had less than optimal experiences with him.”
“She’s obviously a fan of your sister. Her mother, to be exact.”
Martel slowed the motion of the grinding and smiled lightly.
“And how do you feel?”
McKenna watched motions of the ingredients at the bottom of the bowl, transfixed and tense. Did she really expect her to speak freely?
“Fell about what?”
“This whole experience.”
“Scared.”
“Scared of which one of us?”
“All of you…” she said quietly, not looking up at Martel’s face. Martel stopped the grinding.
“Because of what we did to your friend?”
“Because of everything you do and can do,” she said, swallowing a hard, dry gulp after saying the words. Martel set the bowl down and moved to sit on the ground, level with Martel.
“You needn’t be scared of me,” she said. “And you need not be scared for Fairfax. He was made strong enough to withstand everything to come. And we put his mind at ease so he could create a new story for himself.”
“But you still made him,” McKenna said, meeting Martel’s eyes. They did not seem insulted by this statement.
“I did help. It wasn’t my choice.”
McKenna nodded and looked down at the bowl, trying to divert her eyes. Martel sighed. It was the same story McKenna had heard before, that they were all caught up in it and they had to do what they could, blah, blah, blah. The people they ruled in Sigma had simply given up, expecting the wheel of shit to continue spinning constantly while they did what they could to shield themselves.
Martel continued the recipe, thinking of the words she could say to give her companion comfort. Her motherly instincts were annoying her. She wanted to tell her that McKenna was trying to help Fairfax, but theft first they had to get him to come back to Genesee. She couldn’t help him
while he was out here, fighting anything that approached him.
She was soon done with the potion, thick, pink liquid that she swirled admiringly in the base of the bowl. McKenna stared at it suspiciously.
“What does it do?”
“It helps with nerves,” Martel replied.
“Appropriate,” McKenna quipped.
Martel took the bowl and poured the mixture into a small metal tube about the size of her finger. She handed it to McKenna who took it suspiciously.
“You think I need it?”
“We’ve put you though a lot,” Martel said. “I know this is not comfortable.”
McKenna sighed. “I know you are doing your best,” she replied. “I appreciate all of the efforts you’ve made.”
“It is not the way I would do things,” Martel sighed, gathering the ingredients spread on the ground and putting away her satchel. “We do what we have to do.”
“I’ve heard that… A lot.”
Martel met her eyes, staring sternly into them.
“If we couldn’t find him…. If he was to just disappear… That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would. Do you think that’s a possibility?”
“It would have been easier if he hadn’t killed Bautomet,” Martel replied.
“You mean, you would have given him over to Waring?”
“It means, if you want to hide someone you put him where people don’t want to go.”
McKenna nodded, unsure that spending years underground was an acceptable arrangement for anyone.
“He is dangerous,” Martel continued. “He’s not the same person you knew. He also may not remember you. I just want you to be aware. I don’t know what story he may have hatched in his head.”
She looked down. She was holding McKenna’s hand again. This time she noticed. Martel released the hand and walked over to look out of the tent. The rumbling had stopped long ago but the mystery remained.
When the negotiating party finally arrived McKenna thought she was hallucinating. Three animals appeared on the horizon, three woolly dirty-white things with long snouts, carrying rough looking humans on top of them across the roasting hot elements. The man in the middle wore red and orange armor lifted so high off his shoulders and torso that it made him appear to be swallowed by his own shielding. As he approached McKenna realized the armor wasn’t painted but was naturally rust colored. His leg armor had a distinctive blue tint to it that seemed to shine in the mid day light. The women on the animals on each side of him wore white clothing so thick that there must have been armor under it. Their mouths were covered in black cloth so that the only part of them that could be seen was the eyes, which darted between McKenna and Martel.